Sigma Delta
Encyclopedia
Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College is a private, Ivy League university in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. The institution comprises a liberal arts college, Dartmouth Medical School, Thayer School of Engineering, and the Tuck School of Business, as well as 19 graduate programs in the arts and sciences...
in Hanover
Hanover, New Hampshire
Hanover is a town along the Connecticut River in Grafton County, New Hampshire, United States. The population was 11,260 at the 2010 census. CNN and Money magazine rated Hanover the sixth best place to live in America in 2011, and the second best in 2007....
, New Hampshire
New Hampshire
New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state was named after the southern English county of Hampshire. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Canadian...
, United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. First established on the campus in 1972, Sigma Delta, known as "Sigma Delt" by students, as a chapter of the national sorority Sigma Kappa
Sigma Kappa
Sigma Kappa is a sorority founded in 1874 at Colby College in Waterville, Maine. Sigma Kappa was founded by five women: Mary Caffrey Low Carver, Elizabeth Gorham Hoag, Ida Mabel Fuller Pierce, Frances Elliott Mann Hall and Louise Helen Coburn...
. Dartmouth's Sigma Kappa chapter was the first sorority to be founded on Dartmouth's campus. Women were not permitted to enroll at Dartmouth until 1972 and women only slots were an imperative experience for the newly matriculated women. Sigma Kappa fulfilled the gap well with this new establishment where women could meet anytime in the course of the week.
By the late 1980s Dartmouth's student population had diversified. With this diversification of the student body, the sisterhood of Dartmouth's chapter of Sigma Kappa experienced an influx of women of minorities who wished to have not only a female space, but also a space that would embrace their personal identities as women regardless of age, class, religion, or ethnicity. In 1989, Dartmouth's Sigma Kappa chapter split from the national organization citing that the national rituals were too heavily steeped in Christianity. With this move, Sigma Delta was established as Dartmouth's first local sorority.